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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203203">better run from the future</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewitchx/pseuds/rosewitchx'>rosewitchx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Being Homura Is Suffering, Blood and Violence, Gen, Gun Violence, I love those tags, Magic, Mathematics, Nerdiness, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Pre-Canon Homura Time Loop, Time Loop, edgy time travel badass stuck in their teenaged body fighting fate itself, for tua. for madoka its, so. for HOMURA its before the anime. for FIVE its after s2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:55:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewitchx/pseuds/rosewitchx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Homura, exhausted, looks for options elsewhere. </p>
<p>Or—</p>
<p>Five, after the end is prevented twice and he finally gets to rest, receives an unexpected visitor.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akemi Homura &amp; Kaname Madoka, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Akemi Homura, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Vanya Hargreeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>better run from the future</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title: oh mama - run the jewels</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I was hoping you’d be more help,” the girl admits, staring into her cup of tea. Her english only holds the tiniest of accents. “It’s a shame.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough,” Five tells her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They sit in a booth at Griddy’s. The new management had done quite the overhaul of the place; with Agnes gone, now all his childhood memories were truly buried underneath new faux-wood flooring and a fresh bakery aroma. But he can’t focus on the shop at the moment. The girl had come a long way to see him, after all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s his age, that much is certain; maybe a bit younger physically, but her mind is far, far older than it seems. She wears travel clothes and exudes of magic. She’s not like him, or like his siblings - and yet she’s special. The ring around her finger is proof of that fact. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had come to him for help and he hadn’t been able to help, not in the way she wanted. “Our powers work differently from one another,” he reiterates. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>manipulate</span>
  </em>
  <span> time, while I move through it. I could not help you with your calculations unless I studied them, and it took me </span>
  <em>
    <span>decades </span>
  </em>
  <span>to even begin to comprehend mine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t have that kind of time,” she tells him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He nods. “I know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then—“ Her hands hold the cup tighter. “Help me find the break. Help me with any variable I’ve missed. I’ll— I’ll run you through the loop.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, Miss, I—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please,” she insists. He looks into her eyes and sees her years piling on, and he can’t help but pity her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(He looks in the mirror. His own eyes, emerald, feel jaded and tired. He’s far older than he seems.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Run me through your variables again,” he relents. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The girl is calculating, smart if only because of years running through the numbers; what she lacks in experience she makes up in speed. Her mistakes (a misplaced comma, a wrong decimal) are fixable. But still— he doesn’t have much faith in this plan. It’s the best they have, and yet it’s flimsy, relying entirely on </span>
  <em>
    <span>hoping </span>
  </em>
  <span>a girl doesn’t bring the end times. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hits too close to home. He works harder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You weren’t here last loop,” she tells him, one night, as they brainstorm. “You were on TV. That’s why I came.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s already told her about his own time nightmare, about the Commission, about Hazel and Cha-cha and the Swedes and Lila; about red heels and red lips and feeling sick to his stomach. He’s sure she understands, looking at her. Red covers both their hands, and they can’t ever wash the blood off. “Tell me about the Big Bad Asshole again,” he asks her instead. “Might be something missing there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So she does. The Walpurgisnatch is a calamity, but Kriemhild will be a world-ender - only if she’s allowed to exist. He thinks of Vanya, for a moment, and his heart twists. He had asked the girl, </span>
  <em>
    <span>why not fight it?, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and the girl had told him the world-ender was the size of the Everest, even taller, cutting through the atmosphere like a chainsaw, and there were not enough weapons in the galaxy to kill the world-ender, and the world-ender was her best friend, and he thought of Vanya and left it at that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Walpurgisnatch, the Big Bad Asshole, the bulletproof one, that’s the one they must focus on. It’s the one she can arguably kill; the one thing that can turn her best friend into a towering absurd monster when everything else fails. So if they kill it - that’s it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve killed it before,” she’d said, “but only with her by my side. So that’s not an option anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It isn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s three weeks left, but this cycle is already nullified because of her detour to New York. Next loop she’ll actually implement whatever progress they manage; they have three weeks before she has to go back to Japan to fight the Big Bad Asshole. In the meantime they consume ungodly amounts of coffee and crawl through kilometers of equations, statistics, pure probability, and his siblings are none the wiser. And at the end of her trip she bows to him, all stiff and respectful, and says, “I won’t forget you,” and he knows she means it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the world ends that weekend he doesn’t even have time to react, beyond an ill-timed “shit” that gets cut off by the pitch-black void that consumes the planet in an instant. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Five opens the door to the mansion; his siblings are in the kitchen, bickering, and he’s the fastest and second-deadliest, so he’s the one on door duty today. He holds a handgun behind his back and plasters a smile on his face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi,” he says, faux-sweetly, “how may I help you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The girl standing on his doorstep doesn’t smile, but her eyes soften in a way that startles him a little. He frowns as she lifts her luggage once more and looks at him and replies, “hello, Five,” and his frown falls into a cold mask, but then she’s leaning her head down and asking him to put the gun away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I need your help,” she says. “I’ve been here before; brought your equations.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And she zips into his home before he can even react. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The girl, he quickly learns, isn’t bulletproof, but the hole he shoots straight through her head vanishes in an instant - as well as the other two, through her heart and liver - and she merely glares at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your notes from last time,” she tells him, shoving a folder chock-full of his handwriting, seemingly coming out of nowhere. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>you?,” he asks her instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A time traveler like you,” she says. “Not with the Commission.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And what do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>from here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your help.” She is repeating herself for his sake. She sits on the couch, looks at him. “I implemented the fixes last loop, just as a control. This turn I’ll need your help. Come to Mitakihara with me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You want to save the world, is that not right?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sees the world, barren and hopeless. He sees his sister, the brightest light to end it (art is the weapon and she is the bomb). He sees—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
  <em>
    <span>the girl, firing enough guns and missiles to fight a war against a single enemy</span>
  </em>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>himself, the Boy, emptying magazine after magazine and ripping out men’s throats with his teeth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You want to prevent all of this?, </span>
  </em>
  <span>the Handler had once asked him, mockingly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” he says, just as he had said back then, meaning it all the same. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then help me do it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She stands up, then, and suddenly she’s right in front of him (she didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>walk </span>
  </em>
  <span>to him, but it was instantaneous - how?) and her hand is extended towards him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Homura Akemi,” she introduces herself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stares at her, at the violet gleam in her eyes and the unnatural shimmer of the ring around her finger. And he thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is absolutely a mistake, </span>
  </em>
  <span>because there is no way this girl (who can jump through space like him, who is a time traveler like him) is in any way trustworthy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet his heart leaps uncomfortably at the fear of letting it all die again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet, and perhaps a more concerning development, his hands tremble with anticipation as to whatever knowledge the folder holds. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he closes his eyes for just a moment and sees Vanya’s smile, from when they were just children.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He reaches out and squeezes her hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Five Hargreeves,” he tells her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And they get right to work. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>five 🤝 homura<br/>- traumatized<br/>- teenagers only by technicality<br/>- time travelers<br/>- can “teleport”<br/>- emo<br/>- nerds<br/>- will murder people to keep those they love safe </p>
<p>thanks for reading love the gremlins</p></blockquote></div></div>
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